CHAPTER I. 

 A WORD ABOUT THE FAMILY. 



EARLY DAYS IN ENGLAND AND NATAL. 



My father, Johan Marinus Struben, born in 

 Oosterwijk Castle in Holland, 30th March, 1806, was 

 married on the 2nd of May, 1838, to my mother, 

 Frances Sarah Beattie, a daughter of Alexander 

 Beattie, Esq., who was born in Scotland, and was 

 later a landowner in Hampshire, and Consul for 

 several nations at Cowes and Portsmouth, and a 

 shipowner. 



Our grandfather Beattie owned at one time 

 several ships trading with the West Indies, where 

 he had interests in sugar plantations. He lost 

 heavily during the Napoleonic Wars and owing to 

 loss of vessels, under convoy in a gale, and also to 

 the deterioration in value of West Indian property 

 when the slaves were emancipated and land went 

 out of cultivation. 



The Poet Beattie was a cousin of my grand- 

 father's. Lord Byron was a friend of my grand- 

 father Beattie, and stayed with him before he left 

 for Greece. Letters of his written from Missa- 

 longhi were destroyed during the Transvaal War 

 of 1880, together with many other papers and things. 



In 1840 my parents, who were travelling on 

 the Continent visiting Germany and Holland, 



Captain J. H. M. Struben became a naturalized British 

 subject when he married Miss Beattie, and went to reside in 

 England. We have the Letters Patent signed by Queen 

 Victoria. (Editor.) 



